
Oass. 



Book- 



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Some Characteristics 
of Abraham Lincoln 




AN ADDB.E.SS 

Made in the Assembly Room of the Union League of Philadelphia before 

the Pennsylvania Commandery of the Military Order of the 

Loyal Legion of the United States by the Chaplain 

THE REV. HENRY C. McCOOK, D. D., Sc. D. 

on the Anniversary of President Lincoln's Birth 
February 12th, A. D. 1901 



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Some Characteristics of 
Abraham Lincoln 




t^^iflr^^-Ti^/yfv (€cyvv(ur^ 



AN A D D R K S S 

Made in the Assembly Room of the Union League of Philadelphia before 

the Pennsylvania Commandery of the Military Order of the 

Loyal Legion of the L^nited States by the Chaplain 

THE RE\'. HB:XRY C. McCOOK, D.D. , Sc. D. 

on the Anniversary of President Lincoln's Birth 
February 12th, A, D, 1901 



"DEDICATION," "CONSECRATION." 

" Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 
forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal. 

" Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can 
long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
We are met to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting-place 
of those who here gave their lives that that nation might 
live It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do 
this. 

" But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot 
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, 
living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far 
above our power to add or detract. The world will little note 
nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget 
what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedi- 
cated here to the unfinished work that they have thus so 
nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to 
the great task remaining before us — that from these honored 
dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they 
gave the last full measure of devotion — that we highly resolve 
that the dead shall not have died in vain — that the nation 
shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the 
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth." 

Gettysburc, November 19, 1863. 



PUBLISHED at the request of 

Companions of the Order by 

Companion Isaiah Price, Major and 

Brevet Colonel 97th Penna. Vols. 



Philadelphia, March, 1901 



Some Characteristics of Abraham Lincoln 





An Address before the Pennsylvania Commanderv ot the Military 
Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, bv the Chaplain, 
THE RE V. HENRY C. IVI c C O O K, D. D. , Sc. D. 



Honored Commander and Companions : 

Never before this evening has your Chaplain ventured an 
address upon Abraham Lincohi. He ventures now because 
the duty was assigned to him by his superior officer. He has 
one purpose and hope : to voice, in some degree, the reverent 
feeHngs of his Companions and Comrades and their sons, 



toward the one American President who without presumption 
may be placed on an equal pedestal with George Washing- 
ton, whose birthday falls within this same month. 

The first President and the sixteenth were at least alike 
in this : they were men of great stature, though Lincoln was 
six feet four inches high — an inch taller than Washington. 
They were alike, also, in that they held power in the most 
important eras of our history. Washington, as commander- 
in-chief, wrought the union of the Colonies into the fabric of 
a nation ; Lincoln preserved the torn and strained garment 
from being rent in twain. Washington, without challenge, is 
called the Father of his Country When another generation 
shall have passed away Lincoln, with almost equal unanimity, 
will be known as his Country's Savior. 

MR. Lincoln's personal appearance. 

Lincoln's tall stature always commanded attention. 
P>ect, spare, lithe, in his early days an athlete, his muscles 
were hardened by the toil that was his inheritance and lot 
from boyhood to full manhood. The work of the frontier, 
ploughing, planting, felling forest trees, building cabin homes, 
rail-splitting, flat-boating, gave pliancy and toughness to his 
limbs. He was a child of the forest and field ; like Wash- 
ington, disciplined into vigorous manhood and self- poise by 
the open-air life and adventures of a new country. Like 
Washington, too, he was a land surveyor at one period of his 
life, an outdoor occupation which kept up the tonic influence 
of earlier years. 

He has been called ungainly, even ugly. Not so. He 
was easy and graceful in his movements. His features were 
regular and not unpleasing. His deep-set grey eyes lit up 
with rare brightness, and when in animated conversation there 
was a play of intelligence, kindliness and humor upon his 
face, and a sweetness in his smile, that made him seem, if not 
handsome, certainly most attractive. He had an expressive 
mouth, and the lips parted and closed in play of conversation 
and laughter in a rare and pleasant way. 

It was a rugged face, it may be, on which the fret and 
wear of lifelong conflict with rude conditions of nature, and 
scant dower of domestic comforts, and poverty of social and 
educational advantage, had left deep-drawn lines. But it was 
a face cast in one of Nature's noblest moulds, and carved 
into the shapliness and strength of a great and good man. 
One may admire the tree in yonder sheltered nook, screened 
from unkindly winds, nurtured by a fat soil, bathed in sun- 



5 

shine in every part, with freedom for growth and rich nurture 
for growing ; rounded, trim, straight in trunk and shapely in 
hmbs, certainly it is beautiful. But there, on the exposed 
hillside, stands a sturdy oak. Its great trunk is inclosed in 
rough bark, creased and rugose, with the greening moss on 
its weathered side where it faces the northern gales. Its huge 
boughs are gnarled, are far out-spreading, with unequal shape, 
and yawning breaks where young limbs have been wrenched 
away by pressure of snow and wind. Toughened by strug- 
gle with a hundred winters and a thousand storms, it may not 
be beautiful to a critical esthetic eye ; but looking upon its 
massive and stately form, we wjio have found shelter beneath 
it from sun and tempest will declare that it is a goodly ob- 
ject to look upon. Such was Abraham Lincoln. His outer 
manhood, like his inner nature, was of the oaken type. 

In repose his features were apt to fall into a sombre cast, 
and like all high-strung, sanguine temperaments, he had his 
moody spells. We can therefore quite understand that one 
of his favorite poems, which he knew by memory, and was 
fond of reciting, was William Knox's somewhat dolorous la- 
ment : "Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?" 
the last verse of which seems almost a forecast of his own 
demise : 

" 'Tis the twink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, 
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, 
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud ; — 
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ?" 

For the most part, however, his disposition was sunshiny and 
mirthful, and he bubbled over, as perennially as a mountain 
brook, with apposite anecdote, joke, witty story, taking inci- 
dent and keen repartee. There is nothing unnatural or un- 
usual in the seeming contrast, for Thomas Moore uttered a 
well-established psychical truth in his familiar lines : 

"So closely our whims on our miseries tread, 
That the laugh is awaked ere the tear can be dried ; 

And scarce has the teardrop of pity been shed, 
Ere the goose-plumage of folly can turn it aside." 

His voice was rich, musical, not a deep bass, not a baritone, 
— rather a tenor voice ; fine, thin even, at times ; mellow, 
sympathetic, pathetic when the occasion required ; cutting 
through space when he rose to his full form and spoke earn- 
estly ; pleasing, captivating, sj:)lendidly modulated ; withal a 
natural voice ; no whining, no droning ; no sing-song ; but 
manly, clear, ringing out with the tones of a natural orator 
and a genuine man. 



6 

His complexion was almost swart ; there were few blondes 
in the West in his da\-. The malaria, the exposure, the exi- 
gencies and experiences of a new country left, as they always 
do, the tint and tracings of the struggle with primitive nature 
upon his face. But that early seasoning was a part of his 
divine discipline. And it gave the vitality and physical vigor 
that enabled him to bear the unrelaxed strain of those awful 
years when he was President and our Commander-in-chief. 

HIS ANECDOTAL VEIN. 

Lincoln's love of anecdotes has made such a marked im- 
pression on the public mind that the trait has been exagger- 
ated, or, at least, has caused distorted views of the man. We 
remember the terms " buffoon," " ape," etc., that were show- 
ered upon him during the war. In point of fact it would be 
as unjust to thus characterize the man as to characterize a 
mountain stream by the bubbles on its surface. One might 
truly say "a bubbling brook," or even "a babbling brook." 
But would that elimmate the qualities of clarity, sweetness, 
songfulness, usefulness, steadiness, persistency, that make the 
brook a blessing to living things along its mountain channel 
and in the plain beneath? Lincoln's story-telling faculty was 
the play of his kindl)' nature and humorous fancy upon the 
people and affairs around him. It cheered and amused others, 
while it gave relaxation to his own tense and burdened nerves. 

But his anecdotes were not born simply of mirthfulness 
and kindliness. The noteworthy thing about them was that 
they alwa\^s illustrated something. They were not an end, 
but a means to an end. They were barbs and feathers that 
carried home an arrow of truth. He had the faculty that 
marks true prophets and poets. He could see, through the 
outer garb of nature and histor\-, the inner truths that lie 
therein. His anecdotes were parables ; and few men pos- 
sessed such a vast store, and had such keen insight of their 
inner meaning, and such complete and skillful mastery of 
memory's repertoir. His stories were so apt that men have 
thought he invented them for the occasion. If so, even yet 
more wonderful was the genius that created such fancies and 
used them with such practical force. 

Surely his heart must have lain very close to the heart 
of nature ! To him the material worlds and the mysterious 
beings that pervade and, it may be, direct them, must have 
whispered their secrets, as ever they have done to prophets 
and poets, the truest human seers and interpreters of unseen 
things. W'e are told that at times he would fall into deep 



7 

prolonged silences that were almost trancelike. Were these 
the times when he saw visions and dreamed dreams, and 
heard the environing world of spiritual creatures tell him of 
the profound meanings that lie in created things and human 
actions ? 

EDUCATION MASTERY OF ENfiLISH. 

The education of Lincoln was one of the most notable 
facts in his history. Beyond the merest rudiments he was 
self-taught. School-master, instructor or professor he had 
practically none but himself. He mastered surveying, and 
law, and political economy by his own inherent genius and 
patient industr}\ Whence came his eloquence? Whence 
came his pellucid and forceful language, seemingly drawn from 
the very fountain of English undefiled, and which puts to 
shame the speech and writings of the most cultivated ? 
Whence came his profound knowledge of men and history, 
and the underlying principles of things? — of political morals, 
and the policies of nations ? When we see how many young 
men, surrounded from childhood by the stimulus and forma- 
tive influence of cultivated homes, and shaped by the best 
means and methods of school, college and university, fall into 
the ranks of undistinguished mediocrity, or fail to rise above 
the common level, we can understand better the greatness of 
Lincoln's achievements in self-education. Perhaps, after all, 
we had better speak of it as the product of genius, and genius 
is exempt from the rule and gauge, the weights and measures, 
the meets and bounds, by which ordinary mortals are tested 
and limited. Abraham Lincoln was a special creation. Provi- 
dence framed him for a particular era. He was what the 
naturalists call a " unique species ;" we must place him in an 
order of which he is the sole type. 

Lincoln's moral characteristics. 

In that subtle element which we call character, Lincoln 
is entitled to a high place. His appetites and passions were 
under perfect control. He was neither glutton nor drunkard. 
He had the primitive qualities of justice and truth in a high 
degree. P'rom the crown of his bushy black hair to the sole 
of his feet he was a Man, and loved manliness in his fellows. 
Selfishness and greed he despised. He had that rare power 
that Milton gives to the spear of Ithuriel, to detect with 
"touch of heavenly temper " the lurking meanness and self- 
ishness in others. He was simple and sincere ; absolutely 
without affectation, and free from eccentricities, unless his 



story-telling may be so classed. He had a kind heart, and a 
gentle as well as a genial nature. " I have not willingly 
planted a thorn in any man's bosom," he said, and truly. 

He was not a self-assertive man, though at times, when 
his long-enduring patience was unduly tried, he could and 
did assert the rights of his position. He believed in the peo- 
ple. He had unwavering confidence in the power of the 
people — " the plain people," to govern themselves. Was 
there ever a nobler utterance than this : " Let us have faith 
that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end 
dare to do our duty as we understand it " ! And this was 
characteristic of the man. When Heaven gave him to see 
the truth, he held to that truth with inflexible tenacity. Duty 
was the star that guided his course through life. Principle 
was his motor in all the great utterances and actions of his 
noble career. " With charity toward all and malice toward 
none " he accomplished his destiny, and left behind him a 
record from which the angels will have little to blot. 

THE EVOLUTION OE LINCOLN'.S CH.AK.\CTER. 

Such a character as Lincoln could not have been formed 
in a long settled and organized community. It v/as a product 
of the frontier. The seething, fermenting, changing crystal- 
lizing conditions of a new country wrought mightily upon the 
sensitive nature of the lad, the youth, the man, and moulded 
him into the character which men know. Certainly, God 
gave the primitive soul-stuff upon which nature and social 
environment wrought. Men do not carve marble statues out 
of slime. Nor does God so work. Lincoln was bor)i with a 
great soul. His high and noble qualities were native, but 
his environment was a potent factor in their evolution. 

It has been thought remarkable that the middle West 
should be the cradle of so many great men and women. It 
would have been strange had it been otherwise. The conflu- 
ent tides of migration streaming from New England, New 
Jersey and Pennsylvania, from the Border and the Southern 
States, met and intermingled on the hills and plains of Ohio, 
Indiana and Illinois. The best blood of this nation, fresh, 
young, \igorous, wholesome, and for the most part of clean, 
strong and worthy descent, beat in the veins of those pio- 
neers. Their children were the inheritors of physical, mental 
and moral qualities that gave promise of success, and the 
nursing motherhood of their environing life, with its stir and 
strain and stimulus and call for every force of mind and mus- 
cle, insured that manhood and womanhood which have con- 



tributed to our national history some of the noblest sons and 
daughters of the Republic, may we not say, of the race ? 

At least one contributory streamlet of Lincoln's descent 
had its origin in Pennsylvania. Our Keystone State is the 
water-shed of the Atlantic Basin. Here rise the fountains of 
the Delaware, the majestic river which feeds the commerce 
and fosters the agriculture and manufactures of three great 
States. Here, too, among our Eastern mountains the Sus- 
quehanna springs, and, emptying into the Chesapeake, flows 
by the plantations and homes of Maryland and the "old Vir- 
ginia shore," whence so many fathers of the Republic came. 
Even the Potomac, that sweeps majestically by Mount Ver- 
non's sacred shrine, has man}' of its most important foun- 
tains and feeding streams in our Southern valleys and hills. 
In Western Pennsylvania are the sources of the Ohio, " La 
Belle Riviere " — the Beautiful River — that washes the bor- 
ders of every State in which Lincoln had a home. It is not 
simply an analog)' which \'ou are tracing, but a natural and 
necessary consequence, that the movements of human migra- 
tory streams, following the line of least resistance, should 
have taken the course of these rivers southward, eastward 
and westward. 

Erom Penns\-lvania have gone many of the elements 
which have helped to build up the Commonwealths through 
whose soil and into whose waters our creeks and rivers run. 
Some of the branches of the Lincoln ancestry still dwell 
among us in Pennsylvania. But his direct forbears drifted 
downward into Virginia along one of those beautiful valleys 
that open southward, and there his paternal grandfather, as 
well as his father, Thomas Lincoln, and his mother, Nancy 
Hanks, were born. Still westward set the migratory tide, 
and very strongly in the early part of the nineteenth century, 
and brought Thomas Lincoln and his wife to Hardin County, 
Kentucky, where, on the 12th of P\^bruary, A.D. 1809, Abra- 
ham Lincoln was born. It is the birth year of Gladstone and 
Charles Darwin, epoch-making men. In the same year and 
in the same section, and not forty miles distant, was born 
Jefferson Davis, the arch-conspirator and President of the 
Confederate States, around whom, as the official head of the 
Confederacy, the forces of rebellion were gathered. How 
vastly different the character and destin)- of the two lads, 
cradled in the same vicinage ! 

It is noteworthy that the man designed to gi\e the 
death-blow to American negro slaver}' was born in the slave- 
holding State of Kentuck}', and that his parents and some of 



10 

his grandparents were natives of the slaveholding State of 
Virginia, on whose soil so many of the great battles of the 
slaveholders' war were fought, and which was the scene o-f 
the last conflict and the final surrender. He was not a pro- 
duct of " abolitionism " nor a child of a Free State. The bane 
and the antidote (as so often in nature) grew side by side. 

Lincoln was a child of the log cabin. He was not born 
of one of the fine old aristocratic families as was Washington, 
although somewhere in his family tree one might find " good 
blue blood," if that should seem a matter of consequence. 
He sprung from that element of the white population in the 
Commonwealth which always has felt most severely the bur- 
den of slavery, and which, in the border States at least, clung 
with touching fidelity to the Union, and threw its great influ- 
ence on the side of the Federal Government during the Re- 
bellion. 

Lincoln's legal and political career. 

Lincoln entered early upon his political career, and at 
twenty five was a member of the Illinois Legislature, holding 
the position through successive elections for six years, when 
he declined further service. But his whole life had thereby 
received its permanent bent. While pushing his first election 
canvass his talents for speaking led his political colleague, 
John T. Stuart, a lawyer in large practice, to urge him to quit 
surveying and study law. Lincoln eagerly agreed, took home 
the law books which Stuart lent him, and, with his character- 
istic diligence, energy and genius, had sufficiently mastered 
the principles of law to be admitted to the bar in two years. 
Six months afterward (April 15, 1837) he left New Salem and 
removed to Springfield, the county seat of Sangamon County. 
Shortly thereafter the town became the capital of the State 
of Illinois, and Lincoln, in partnership with his friend Stuart, 
entered upon that career which ended in the Presidency. 

His succes as a lawyer drew to him many important 
cases. My first professional service was wrought in the 
county seat of De Witt County, Illinois, from which I 
entered the volunteer service of the United States. That 
district was then within the circuit of Lincoln, Douglas, 
David Davis, Welden, Leonard Swett and all the leading 
lawyers of Central Illinois, many of whom I have preached 
to when a callow and half-fledged parson. The place was 
redolent with anecdotes of these men ; and many of the 
townspeople who had come in closest contact with Lincoln 
were well aware of those noble qualities and personal peculi- 



1 1 

arities which have since become historic. I recall especially 
the pride and satisfaction with which my parishioners told of 
Mr. Lincoln's visit to the church when it was opened, and 
how generously he aided them in their struggles to pay for 
their house of worship. 

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise awakened and 
spread throughout the North that anti- slavery agitation which 
led to the organization and triumph of the Republican party. 
Lincoln was aroused from his legal practice to the public dis- 
cussion of the questions agitating the nation. The enthusiasm 
and skill of his leadership of what was then the opposition in 
Illinois led to the triumph of his party, and Lincoln barely 
escaped election to the United States Senate by the refusal to 
vote for him of four sturdy Democratic members of the opposi- 
tion who were not quite prepared to bolt his crash Whiggery. 

Then followed days whose very recollection stirs the 
blood like a trumpet charge. The Whigs and Anti-Slavery 
Democrats coalesced, and framed the Republican party in 
1856. Two years later Stephen A. Douglas, the author of 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which act had pre- 
cipitated the anti-slavery agitation upon the nation, was re- 
nominated for Senator by his party in Illinois. Lincoln, as 
his opponent, canvassed the State against him. Douglas ac- 
cepted Lincoln's challenge to a public debate. The two 
champions met at several different points, and each separately 
canvassed the entire State. It was a battle of the giants. 
The great questions under discussion were the right or wrong 
of human slavery ; the aggressions of the slaveholding 
power ; the arrest of the spread of slavery ; the consecration 
and confirmation of every rood of our territorial possessions 
to Freedom, and in the end the environment of the slave 
States with a cordon of free people that should ultimately, by 
very force of example and necessity of social and political 
condition, compel the gradual emancipation of the slaves. 

The discussion was typical. It prefigured and forecast 
the future. The whole nation followed it with eager interest. 
Douglas was a well-known character ; a man of national 
reputation ; a strong man ; the " little giant," as his friends 
fondly called him. Lincoln was unknown beyond the limits 
of Illinois. But when the contest closed a new star had 
risen upon the horizon of national affairs, and seeing minds 
knew it was a star of the first magnitude. 

Lincoln's moderate views of Constitutional autlioritx- and 
of public policy were approved by the cautious and con- 
servative. Hut Lincoln saw and asserted plainl)- that beneath 



12 

all technical and documental points la\' " the higher law " 
which declares that all men are created equal, and endowed 
by their Creator with the inalienable right to liberty. 

He opened the campaign against Douglas by uttering in 
the Republican nominating convention (January i6th, 1858) 
these prophetic words : " A house divided against itself can- 
not stand. I believe that this Government cannot endure 
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the 
Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall. 
But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become 
all one thing or all the other. luther the opponents of 
slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where 
the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course 
of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward 
till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as 
new — North as well as South." 

Bold words ! How bold only those will understand who 
can recall the condition of affairs in the antebellum era, and 
remember the constriction which the contracting folds of the 
slave power had wrought in political, social, commercial and 
even religious circles. The popular vote was cast for 
Lincoln, but the representative districts were so apportioned 
that Douglas secured the legislative majority and was re- 
elected. Yet the hero and real victor was Abraham Lincoln. 
The campaign made him President. The Republican Con- 
vention of i860 nominated Lincoln and Hamlin as their 
candidates, and flinging forth their banner inscribed, " No 
Extension of Slavery," moved on to the triumph which 
seated Lincoln in the White House, occasioned the War of 
Secession and the Emancipation of the slaves. 

Has this great, perhaps the greatest, work of Lincoln's 
been a failure? Certainly the national interest in the full 
emancipation of the enslaved blacks, which led up to the war 
for the Union, has shown a marked retrogression. The 
sense of responsibility for the future of the freedmen has 
rested too lightly upon the consciences of the men and the 
party that secured their freedom. Thus it has followed that, 
by slow yet irresistable stages, the political rights or privi- 
leges of the colored men of the old Secession States have been 
abridged and nullified. What will be the result? Shall the 
time of reaction come ? How shall it come ? By peaceable 
agitation and evolution ? By revolution of conflict and blood- 
shed ? These are questions that the thinking and conscientious 
lover of his country must ask, and, if he ventures an answer, 
speaks with mingled fear and hope. 



13 

What would Abraham Lincohi say were he to- day to 
come among us ? Would his great heart be grieved at the 
results of his emancipation policy? Surely we would have 
something to show him that would cheer his heart and 
strengthen him in the belief that he did the right thing, the 
good thing, the best thing for both whites and blacks. That 
was a touching incident which not long ago occurred in the 
House of Representatives of Congress. A lawyer, a man of 
education and ability, an elder and officer in a Christian 
church, the only colored member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and the last type of a period that is ended, stood 
up to pronounce what he called the " valedictor}- of his race " 
in Congress. It was a pathetic incident, and surely must 
have awakened sad reflections in many hearts, and sad fore- 
bodings, too. Yet the incident has its hopeful and its cheer- 
ing phase. 

"The negro of forty years ago," said the Hon. Mr. 
White, of North Carolina, " has passed awa>- forever. Illit- 
eracy among the members of the colored race has decreased 
forty-five per cent. Of that race there are to-day in this 
country 2000 negro lawyers and 2000 physicians. It holds 
jg 1 2,000,000 of school property and ;$40,ooo,ooo of church 
propert)'. Negroes own 140,000 homes and farms, valued at 
$75,000,000, and they have personal property to the amount 
of $170,000,000 more. All this," said Mr. White, "they 
have accomplished in the face of almost insurmountable 
obstacles — lynchihgs, burnings, false accusations, slanders, 
social, civil and economic obstructions and oppositions in- 
numerable, and with the door of every trade closed against 
them." Surely could Mr. Lincoln, who knew the illiterate, 
ill-housed, ill-fed, semi-barbarous negro of the Southern slave 
plr.ntations, have listened to such a statement as this, he would 
have lifted up to heaven the hand that signed the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation, and have said, " God, I thank thee !" 
and heaven might echo, " Well done, good and faithful 
servant !" 

And what would Lincoln have said to the conclusion of 
Congressman Wliite's oration ? "I am delivering," said he, 
"the valedictory of the colored man in Congress. But it is 
not a final farewell. The negro shall come again." He 
stood there (he declared) for a people bruised, broken-hearted, 
outraged, bereft of common and natural rights, but a people 
faithful and industrious still. He asked for them no special 
favors, but only a fair field to win the common blessings of 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 



'4 

The future is not wholly dark. It may be that the 
freedman of the South, dispossessed for the time of political 
privileges, and alienated from political agitations and ambi- 
tions, shall be thrown back upon those fields of usefulness 
and self-development wherein, by industry and good behavior, 
he will reap a harvest that shall demand and secure for him a 
willing return of former privileges, a hearty welcome to all 
franchises and endowments of American citizenship. When 
wealth, intellectual power, education and culture, social 
organization, and moral and religious development, ha\e come 
to the negro with the coming \'ears of the twentieth century, 
the few surviving soldiers and companions of the Grand Army 
of the Republic will have no regrets to spend over the part 
which heaven gave them to take in securing, by their good 
right hands, the freedom bestowed by Abraham Lincoln's 
military proclamation of emancipation. 

THE DIFFICULTIES OF LINCOLN'S WORK. 

The difficulties that Lincoln had to contend with, and 
the tremendous inertia of the loyal States, and the active and 
organized opposition to his emancipation plans, will better be 
understood by remembering (what is so often forgotten by 
many and unknown by more) that the Constitutional embodi- 
ment of emancipation was bitterh^ opposed. Lincoln tried to 
carry it through Congress during the winter of 1863—64, but 
failed to get the required two-thirds vote of the House. It 
was not until January 31st, 1865, that Congress passed the 
joint resolution proposing to the States the thirteenth amend- 
ment to the Constitution, which prohibited slavery and invol- 
untary servitude. President Lincoln had been dead eight 
months before the official proclamation could be made (De- 
cember 1 8th, 1865) declaring the ratification by three-fourths 
of the States of the amendment which gave legal expression 
to the act of emanci]:)ation ! Sla\'ery died slowly, and the 
great Emancipator died without the sight of its Constitutional 
entombment. 

Speaking of the difficulties, almost incredible to this 
generation, that the great President had to meet in his double 
task of saving the Union and destroying chattel slavery, let 
us recall the conflict over Lincoln's second election. A 
prominent and widely-honored general of the war was his an- 
tagonist, nominated upon a platform which declared the war 
against secession a failure, and demanded the cessation of 
hostilities. At the ensuing election, November 8th, 1864, 
although the electoral vote was 212 to 21, there were in the 



15 

loyal States 1,808,725 votes cast for McClellan as against 
2,216,076 votes for Lincoln, a majority of only 407,351 ! If 
the voters of the seceded States be considered, there was at 
that time, within a year of the successful close of the war, a 
vast popular uiajority favorable to the cessation of hostilities and 
the eoitseqiieiit dissolution of the Union. It took wise and cau- 
tious piloting to bring the ship of state safely through such 
shallows and breakers. The greatness of the pilot must be 
estimated by the perils which he overcame. 

Lincoln's death — hls place in history. 

April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered his gallant army to 
Grant at Appamattox. Five days thereafter, while every 
loyal heart was still throbbing with the intoxication of victory, 
and glad in the hope of returned peace and prosperity, the 
great heart of our leader and President had ceased to beat. 
The glorious morning that had dawned upon the Republic was 
turned into the shadow of death. The nation was appalled. 

" It is a dark, dark day for the Northern people," I said 
to my St. Louis physician, a Southern man and secessionist, 
who had come to visit one of my family on the day the awful 
news came of Lincoln's assassination. "It is a far darker 
day for the people of the South," he answered ; and his 
bated breath and pallid face showed how deeply he felt. 
"What will follow?" "God only knows." Thus men 
queried and answered. Those were days of terror. We 
seemed to be living upon the thin crust of a political volcano ; 
the very earth appeared to tremble beneath us. 

How far-reaching was that infamous plot of assassination 
perhaps will never be known. It was conceived with diaboli- 
cal ingenuity. Had it succeeded in slaying both President 
and Vice-President, and Grant, the head of the army, and 
Seward, the Secretary of State, Congress being then ad- 
journed, and the House of Representatives dissolved and 
without a Speaker, as the law then stood, there would have 
been no legal head to the government, and apparently no one 
with authority to call the people to an election. What would 
have followed ? What action would foreign nations have 
taken ? What would have been the policy of the large and 
influential minority which opposed the war? Would the 
smouldering fires of the Rebellion have broken forth again ? 
It is vain to speculate, except as speculation shows how fear- 
fully near the edge of an immeasurable calamity the Republic 
was brought by a plot which must have had wiser heads to 
plan it than the wretched tools appointed for its execution. 



1 6 

Well ma\' all loyal hearts pray, and always pra)% " God save 
the Republic ! God save the President !" 

It would be unmeet to omit on this occasion a reference 
to the perils that brooded over the nation, generated in the 
unfriendh' atmosphere of Europe. It was delicate diplomacy 
and most tactful management that saved us from foreign 
complications. And to-day, while the dirge that a mourning 
empire has raised above the great and good Queen Victoria 
is still echoing upon sea and shore, it is most meet to speak 
with grateful heart of her whose wise and friendly policy, 
fostered by her noble consort, held back the rising wave of 
hostility that threatened to sweep over us from Great Britain. 
America owes to Queen Victoria a debt that in this hour we 
are glad to acknowledge. [Applause.] And when the news 
of Lincoln's death was flashed under ocean, the awful calamity 
awakened a sympathy which, in Britain's hour of sorrow, has 
been rendered back a hundredfold. The wings of a world- 
wide peace were spread above our martyred leader's tomb, 
and thus it may be said of him, that, like the Hebrew Hercu- 
les, "the dead that he slew at his death were more than they 
that he slew in his life." 

Some men's names are brightest in their contemporary 
era. Others shine and pale, and renew their lustre, and grow 
dim, as the clouds of passing fancies or historic fads hide or 
uncover them. Some pass into the outer and utter darkness 
of historic forgetfulness. And some there are which shine on 
steadfast and eternal, brightening ever as the ages go by. 
Such are the names of George Washington and Abraham 
Lincoln. On the imperishable chart of American constella- 
tions, where shine the names of the great and good, these 
two stars of glory shall burn most bright among the brightest. 
Where a grateful country shall set aloft the icons of our 
national worthies, posterity shall write beneath the statues of 
these two men the words : " Pater Patriae ! Salvator Patria.- !" 
— This was the Father of his Country ; This his Country's 
Savior ! 



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